Issues of concern to people who live in the west: property rights, water rights, endangered species, livestock grazing, energy production, wilderness and western agriculture. Plus a few items on western history, western literature and the sport of rodeo... Frank DuBois served as the NM Secretary of Agriculture from 1988 to 2003. DuBois is a former legislative assistant to a U.S. Senator, a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Interior, and is the founder of the DuBois Rodeo Scholarship.

Tuesday, April 06, 2010

2 children killed in Mexico border state shootout

A shootout in northern Mexico between soldiers and suspected drug cartel gunmen killed two children and wounded five of their relatives who were caught in the crossfire, the latest in a string of deaths of bystanders in the nation's drug war. The 5- and 8-year-old brothers were traveling in their family's car when the gunbattle broke out on a highway near the border city of Nuevo Laredo, the Tamaulipas state government said in statement Sunday night. The statement corrected an initial government report that only bystander was killed in the confrontation Saturday night. Two suspected gunmen were also killed. "We ran and tried to hide in the brush, but they kept shooting," said Maria Guadalupe Delgado Castillo, an aunt of the dead children. She sobbed as she waited outside the Nuevo Laredo General Hospital where her relatives were being treated. One family member was shot in the stomach and the other four had less severe injuries. The state government said 11 family members were in the car, which it described as an "all terrain vehicle" similar to the ones in a convoy of drug cartel suspects. The statement did not say which side fired the bullets that struck the family's car...more